East Windsor residents to vote on casino ordinance Thursday night
A town meeting Thursday night in East Windsor promises to feature spirited debate over a proposed ordinance aimed at derailing the casino the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribes have agreed to build in the town, provided the state legislature passes a bill allowing it.
The town attorney is recommending residents reject the ordinance, which he has found to be “legally defective.” Nevertheless, its passage likely would lead to a referendum.
“It’s bizarre,” Robert Maynard, East Windsor’s first selectman, said Wednesday, describing the situation.
His worry is that there won’t be enough room at Town Hall to accommodate the turnout he expects, in which case the meeting might have to be moved to a bigger venue.
“It’ll probably be a rather lengthy meeting,” Maynard said. “I’m going to limit people to two minutes (speaking).”
Casino opponents successfully petitioned for the meeting and hope to have it adjourned to a referendum. That would require a vote to approve the proposed “Ordinance Providing for the Licensing of Gaming Facilities in the Town of East Windsor.”
In an opinion posted on the town’s website, Joshua Hawks-Ladds, the town attorney, finds much fault with the ordinance, which anti-casino petitioners conceded might be the case when they submitted it.
As Hawks-Ladds points out in his opinion, “The proposed ordinance does not seek to rescind the Town’s fully executed development agreement with MMCT Venture, LLC (the two tribes’ partnership) to develop a casino in East Windsor. Rather, most of the proposed ordinance merely seeks to regulate the casino once it is constructed.”
However, he continues, “one section of the proposed ordinance ... would effectively destroy the current development agreement.”
That’s the section barring “a gambling facility” from being located within 2,500 feet of the property line of “a residential treatment facility operated by the State of Connecticut.” The proposed casino site, now occupied by a former Showcase Cinemas building off Exit 45 of Interstate 91, is within 2,500 feet of the Albert J. Solnit Children's Center, a state-run psychiatric residential treatment facility for adolescent males.
Hawks-Ladds deems the proposed ordinance illegal on several counts, and finds that it would be pre-empted by enactment of state legislation authorizing MMCT to develop an East Windsor casino.
"Whatever we would have submitted, they would have had a problem with it,” Michele Mudrick, a spokeswoman for the Coalition Against Casino Expansion in Connecticut, the group behind the petition drive, said Wednesday. “You would think they’d want residents’ voices heard. A casino would have a tremendous effect on the town. To not have a referendum is irresponsible and unjust.”
Mudrick said the proposed ordinance was drafted by an attorney who was consulted by local businessmen concerned about the impact a casino would have. She said she did not know the identities of the businessmen or the attorney.
Brianna Stronk, an East Windsor resident involved in the petition effort, said she was mystified by much of the town attorney’s opinion, particularly “his reliance on the fact that ‘gambling is illegal’ (in town) as the basis for the proposed ordinance being illegal.”
“If gambling’s illegal as he says, then I’m trying to understand how he allowed the town to enter into a development agreement with MMCT that specifically commits the town to allow building of a ‘casino facility,’” she said.
As for the town meeting, “Whatever happens, it won’t be the end,” Mudrick said.
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